Here Come the Leaping Lesbians

For each academic year since I’ve become a professor, the end of classes has been punctuated by a rock show. I have fond memories of sitting on the Carnegie-Mellon lawn in Pittsburgh, lazily watching a lukewarm set by Superchunk. Another year we drove to Cleveland to watch Shiner (one of my favorite bands at the …

More Language Politics

I was pleased to see that the French language lobby stopped the Esso Corporation’s plan to give its depanneurs an English name — “On the Go,” and I am pleased to see that people are now starting to ask questions about the English-language signs for multinationals. Since Bill 101 the Quebec language police have been …

Baby’s First Liberal Convention

Last night Carrie and I watched our first Canadian political convention and . . . is was boring and disappointing. Yes, I know we should have known better from years of American political conventions but somehow I thought it would be different here, that issues and positions would be discussed. Instead, it was a serial …

The “Quebec is a Nation” Controversy 101 for Americans

Ron writes in the comments that he’d like an explanation of what the hell is going on up here in federal politics. Given that I have found no more divisive issue (1) among Canadians (and that’s among anglophones and among francophones as well as across language divisions), I’m sure to get myself in trouble here. …